


Delivered Unto You

by Endivinity



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Character Death, the courier doesnt make it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 02:11:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10295177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endivinity/pseuds/Endivinity
Summary: Veronica never quite catches their name. Doesn't seem to matter, in the end. Time moves on, people come and go, and the Mojave is restless as it has been for centuries.





	

Veronica knew the traders by name. She knew the NCR, the prospectors, their pack brahmin. She knew the mercenaries by appearance, or at least by demeanor, and most of them never passed back through again. The wasteland was expansive and dangerous, after all, and the trade post was not particularly exciting to be around for longer than a few days.  
At first, the newcomer was just like all the others; passing through, headed north towards the bright lights on the horizon. She didn't catch their name, and they were gone by morning. In the days that followed though, she noticed them hanging around every now and then, approaching from different directions – the 95, or Black Mountain. Most of the time it was to sleep for a few hours or to offload weapons onto the NCR arms merchant, so she passed them off as a supplier and left it at that.  
Sometimes they would show up with gunshot wounds, burns to the skin, holes in clothing. “Fiends,” they'd say, their voice with a rough edge to it, their name not quite audible, mumbled into a bandage roll. “Super mutants.”  
The longest they were gone for was when NCR forces packed up, moved out to the Dam, and the trade post was devoid of almost all life for the longest time that Veronica could remember. The wanderer was the first to come back to the trade post, covered in cuts, clothes ripped and patched and torn again, with a grin. “We won.” They did not have an allegiance, Veronica realized, so who was the winner?  
But as NCR stopped coming through the interstates, and Legion all but vanished, and one day the lights of the Lucky 38 flickered and died, she came to realize that 'we' was the Mojave.  
So it was that with less traders, the arms merchant left for California, the Gun Runners pulled out back north to their Vegas branch; the Slop & Shop was all that remained.  
It was remarkable, though, the loss of Legion and NCR. As Veronica ventured through the wasteland for scrap as was her duty, the Mojave residents lost that haunted look to their eye, became grim and resolute. Without the questionable security of two armed forces clearing the land of aggressive fauna, the wildlife started to creep back where it used to be. Dust and sand under the drive of the wind; geckos and scavenging dogs shadowed the outskirts of buildings lit at night to keep them at bay. 

The last time the wanderer showed, a slow weary shadow on the horizon, she did not notice, her back to the wasteland and its sand on the wind. It was only the sound of their stumbling and then collapse which alerted her to their presence there.  
Their hands were outstretched, reaching up the railing, but their fingers trembled too much, too unsteady to support their weight any longer. They grumbled under their breath, as if this was merely an inconvenience, and rolled onto their back. They left a shadow, red across the broken concrete. She caught sight of armor, no longer useful, shredded by long slices, and their hands fumbling to undo buttons slick with blood. She helped to peel sleeves away from arms patched with crimson, helped them to sit, propped their back against the wall. They tipped their head back, sighed, and laughed. They laughed, and looked her right in the eye. “Deathclaws.”  
They waved away her attempts to help, a bandage rolling between fingers experienced with patching up torn skin by now, but when she looked back some time later their face was directed towards the sun, half of their wounds exposed to the sky and drying in the heat, empty riverbeds of ochre.  
“No use,” they said, when she took the bandage from their limp fingers. “No use.” The bandage, their body.  
“Can't fight em alone, not like at the Dam.”  
She tried to pull the rest of their armor off, to pick the broken plating away, but their arm held it down. “Game's up,” they mumbled. “Couriers gotta make their last delivery some day.”  
They pulled a stained, crumpled letter, sealed in a makeshift envelope that was torn at the edges, and pressed it into her hand. When she looked confused, they said it wasn't theirs to send.  
They patted her shoulder, turned their face toward the sun, and set off beyond the desert.  
Veronica buried them on a sandy hill, facing the west. The letter was for anyone and for no one; it was the price of two bullets in the forehead and 29 less coins than history's traitor. She left the grave unmarked, as it told her there was already a marker standing in Goodsprings for them. No need for another.  
She burned the letter, and as its ashes mingled with desert dust immemorial, she turned, and left.


End file.
